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It was a taffeta meringue. It creased, but nobody cared. Her David and Elizabeth Emanuel wedding dress and its poufy leg-o’-mutton shoulders inspired a zillion eighties brides.

Photo: Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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On the Queen’s Balmoral estate during their honeymoon, her blouson-jacket tweed suit refreshed the conventional huntin’-shootin’-fishing uniform.

Photo: Serge Lemoine/Getty Images

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Tabloid dynamite in dress form: The décolleté of this David and Elizabeth Emanuel ball gown detonated a sensation when she arrived at a fund-raising concert at the Goldsmiths’ Hall in 1981.

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Wearing a tailored coatdress as she carries new baby William, arriving at Aberdeen airport in 1983.

Photo: Georges De Keerle/Getty Images

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Her happy young-mum years were spent in many conservative belted midis with cavalier collars and flats: eighties Sloane Ranger uniform, incarnate. Here, with Prince Charles and baby William in Auckland in 1983.

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The glamour begins: Shedding her conservative chrysalis, Diana stuns the press when she emerges as a gilded siren for the premiere of the James Bond film A View to a Kill in 1985.

Photo: Jayne Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images

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Dancing with John Travolta at the White House, this Victor Edelstein dress, worn with her favorite pearl choker, is an indelible image in Diana’s life.

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Chic at last: Catherine Walker’s feminine tailoring gave Diana the poise to cut a swath through the crowds at Ascot, and on countless other occasions at the zenith of the power-suit era.

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Her most beautiful night: the slim, pink-and-white high-waisted Catherine Walker, her hair longer, her enjoyment evident, Diana’s stardom shone when she appeared at the London Coliseum in 1989.

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Alone at the Taj Mahal in a Catherine Walker outfit. Diana famously arranged this PR coup to send a message about the parlous state of her marriage.

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It was Jacques Azagury, the young Knightsbridge eveningwear designer who became a favorite of Diana, Princess of Wales, who made her the sky-blue fitted dress she wore in 1997. He re-created it and made seven other dresses for Naomi Watts to wear in the biopic Diana, which opens today. Azagury was introduced to Diana by Anna Harvey, a tactful mentor from British Vogue, who silently guided her wardrobe choices through her formative years as a royal after her marriage to Prince Charles in 1981. Once a naïve 20-year-old with huge public responsibilities, Diana grew from being a girl struggling with protocol—and some disastrously too-old eighties notions of establishment formalwear—to becoming a wildly popular young mother and, eventually, into the sleek, confidently stylish independent People’s Princess the whole world loved.

Above, we chart how she found her feet with fashion, reflecting the times, her personality, and famously projected her ups-and-downs through the clothes she wore.